Actors Trimala Adhikari and Somnath Mandal in the lead roles from a scene in the short film.
| Photo Credit: Special arrangement
Short film A Lullaby for Yellow Roses by Kolkata-based Bengali director has won the Best Social Justice Film award at the 19th Tasveer Film Festival and Market, the only Oscar-qualifying south Asian film festival.
Directed by Rahul Roye and produced by Abdullah Al Kandari the 18-minute short stars Trimala Adhikari and Somnath Mandal in the leading roles.
Set in Kolkata, the story revolves around an estranged migrant couple’s journey of finding solace and friendship in each other after losing a girl child to societal customs and prejudices. This delicate topic of female feticide has been dealt with empathy by the director and has received wide appreciation from the audience.
While developing the story, Roye has touched upon the sensitive and less-discussed issue of how differently men and women are expected to express their emotions, especially grief.
“Being gender queer, this topic is personal for me. I could never fit myself into the societal gender binaries. I think gender is more of a political tool. The same way grief is also gendered,” Roye said to The Hindu.
The poster of the short film A Lullaby For Yellow Roses.
| Photo Credit:
Special arrangement
They point out that they have tried to portray how a man is not allowed to cry even in front of his wife when they have both lost a child because the couple never got to be friends while trying to keep up with the societal expectations of being husband and wife.
“The story started developing when my producer got in touch with me because he wanted to make a film on ‘grief’ and how grief can work as glue between two souls,” says Roye as they spoke about the journey of the film and how the ideation process started.
A Lullaby for Yellow Roses has travelled to over 87 film festivals across the world including Oscar and BAFTA-qualifying Flickerfest Australia, Brussels Short Film Festival, and London Short Film Festival among others.
The director has previously directed the critically acclaimed queer film called Man & Wife which was about “a nonbinary person coming out to the bride to be just before the wedding in an arranged marriage setting”.
In their next project Roye is developing a short which is about being an Indian man through a trans lens. The film has been in the works for the last two years and is now in the pre-production stage.
Published – October 25, 2024 07:08 pm IST
